


Gloves

by Lexicon_V



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Aftermath, Aftermath of Violence, Bombing, Canon-Typical Violence, Pre-Canon, Saw does his best, Traumatized war orphan, Young Jyn, but he's still a warlord
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 06:28:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22589428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexicon_V/pseuds/Lexicon_V
Summary: Smoke, dust, and debris filled the air. Jyn was deaf, choking, disoriented, taken by surprise when she shouldn’t have been. It was her bombA mission goes awry for young Jyn.
Relationships: Jyn Erso & Saw Gerrera
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> First time poster, longtime lurker. Feedback would help me feel like this wasn’t a terrible mistake. 😬

Jyn picked at the dead, white skin around the perimeter of the wound. It was early, but she couldn’t fall back to sleep.

 _Clumsy. Stupid. Childish. You’ve been here for three years and you’re still a liability. You still need to be saved when things get hot._

It had been two days since the top few layers of skin on the heel of her dominant hand had been scraped away, leaving the raw, moist, tender layer underneath exposed. Two days, now, since they had to abandon their latest camp, go back on the run.

Jyn’s fault, but Saw didn’t say that. Out loud.

\------

It hadn’t been her device, she didn’t build it, but she had placed it. She should have double checked, triple checked, quintuple checked the detonator and timer. She wasn’t an amateur. She’d done this flawlessly dozens of times. Doe-eyed little urchin in the city center, ragged old school bag casually propped against the exterior wall of the local Imperial watering hole. Other members of the team create a diversion nearby, just enough ruckus to give her a chance to activate the detonator and run. The off-duty ‘troopers pour out to gawk at the commotion in the street. The on-duties go running to put down the disturbance. Then, blammo. 

As chaos reigns, Jyn and the rest of the team are indistinguishable from the dozens of terrified civilians running away from the blast. Easy, timeless, effective. And if a few civilians go down with the Imps? This is a war. Bad things happen. Besides, Jyn doesn’t stick around long enough to worry about it.

Jyn crouched behind a dumpster in the alley across the street and half a block away. Perfect vantage point, she’d staked it out over a week ago. She could see the entrance to the pub at one end of the block and hear her team mounting their diversion at the other end. A box-speeder was waiting at a rendezvous point 15 blocks north with Saw and two other officers ready to receive them once they’d escaped the scene.

She stuffed protective putty in her ears so the blast wouldn’t deafen her and pulled a mask over her nose and mouth so she wouldn’t choke on the dust. She watched as off-duty ‘troopers filed out, shouting encouragement to their colleagues, who were moving on Schnell and Edgerly brawling down the street.

_Not yet, not yet….NOW._

_NOW._

Nothing.

_Fuck. It’s a dud._

White helmets streamed toward the brawling Partisans, stun batons glowing.

_Not blasters. That’s good. Is that good? No. They’ll be taken down, held in custody, questioned. But maybe it will be ok? We can lay low. They just look like two drunks fighting. No reason they won’t just be fined and released._

_But the bag is still there. That’s….a problem. That will lead to questions if they find it while Schnell and Edgerly are still in custody. Should I go get it? No, stupid. Better soldiers than you have had their hands blown off doing dumb shit like that. It may be a dud, but you can’t take that for granted._

She pulled off the mask and took a deep, steadying breath. _Assess the situation, Jyn. What can you see? What can you feel? What can you hear?_ She pulled the putty out of her ears so she could listen to what was happening down the street.

BOOM.

_Well. Shit. Not a dud. A faulty timer. Had she checked it? She must have. She always did._

Smoke, dust, and debris filled the air. Jyn was deaf, choking, disoriented, taken by surprise when she shouldn’t have been. It was _her bomb._

The ‘troopers, on duty and off, who had all made it safely to the other end of the block were now mobilizing. She couldn’t stay here. She had to get to the rendezvous point, to Saw. He’d know what to do. And if he killed her later for this _stupid, stupid, stupid_ mistake? At least he’d give her a kinder death than the Empire.

She pulled the mask back over her nose and mouth and made a run for it. In the haze of the blast zone, she was unremarkable. Another panicked body bobbing through the chaos. The ringing in her ears persisted, but it wasn’t long before the other noises began to break through again- the shrieking of sirens, the screams of civilians. (Anguished screams, calling the names of friends or loved ones or just making indeterminate, guttural sounds of fear, pain, and desperation as they bled in the street.) The mechanized voices of stormtroopers ordering people to clear the area, medical droids scanning piles of rubble and inert bodies on the ground for signs of life.

_This is a war. Bad things happen. Just stop, stop, stop. Let me stay deaf until I’m out of here._

The sounds of chaos faded as she put some distance between herself and the blast zone. The shriek of sirens still came from all directions as medical aid from all across the city rushed to the site. There were still people, dusty and dazed, but unhurt, hurrying through the streets. Mostly silent, but some breathing heavily, some sobbing quietly, thin lines of clean skin showing through where tears had washed away the dust.

But the screams…she couldn’t hear them now, so she put them out of her mind. This is a war. Bad things happen. She knew as well as anyone that you didn’t have to fight in the war to die in it. At least dead civilians didn’t have to live under Imperial rules anymore. Lucky, really.

She could see the box-speeder a block and a half away when the tinny voice of a stormtrooper commanded, “Stop right there, girl.”

Jyn put on her best frightened child face. There were even tears pouring from her eyes, clean streaks in the dust on her face already. _Wait, what? When did that start?_

“Where are you coming from?”

“I was caught downtown, something happened. Something exploded,” Jyn said, in a small, confused voice.

“Why are you wearing that mask?”

Dread seized her.

_Because, sir, I didn’t want to choke on dust and debris after I set the bomb off, and I was too fucking stupid to remember to toss it once I got a far enough away. Because I’m an amateur and a liability, and so criminally dumb you should honestly just shoot me on the spot._

_Fuck. Force. Damn it all._

“I’m sorry?” she asked innocently. Trying to buy some time, but it didn’t work.

“Where does a little girl caught up in a terrorist attack find a fitted N-95 respirator mask while running from a blast zone?” He stepped toward her, hand on his blaster.

She tugged it off and looked at it in feigned astonishment.

“Oh, right, I hardly notice it anymore, because I always have to wear it when I’m out. I have a condition. I can’t fight off germs like most people can.” She cast her eyes down, then looked up sadly through her lashes.

_I’m just a little 11-year-old human girl with a compromised immune system who needs to get home…_

He took his hand off his blaster and Jyn felt a stab of relief. Until he reached for something else. A scanner? _Was he going to medscan her? Shit._ No, it was some kind of swabbing device.

“Let me see your hands,” he said.

Her hands.

Which would surely light up whatever that is with trace explosives from this bomb and at least three others she had handled in the last few days.

Saw could see what was happening from the speeder, surely, but Jyn knew she was on her own. He wouldn’t expose himself or the rest of the cell just to bail out one soldier. _One useless soldier who botched the whole mission._

Jyn nodded. She moved as if she was about to comply, then pivoted and ran as fast she possibly could. If she could lose him, she could try to circle back to the rendezvous. Or hunker down in a safe house outside town. The ‘trooper immediately gave chase, but Jyn was small and light and unencumbered by armor or weapons (Force damn it, she wouldn’t even need to run if she had a weapon), so she steadily increased her lead.

He wouldn’t call for backup. How embarrassing would that be? Backup to take down a little girl? While a full blow search and rescue effort was happening blocks away? She’d get away. She was sure.

Until her foot caught on a raised corner of the cracked sidewalk.

She stumbled for two steps, desperate to believe she could right herself and keep running, then she crashed to the ground. Her right hand hit first and slid, skin tearing away, wrist bending awkwardly. Her left knee went down next, pants tearing, gravel biting into the skin. She ended up skidding several feet and landing in a graceless heap, arms and legs akimbo. She struggled to get to her feet as the ‘trooper closed the distance between them. Blood dripped from her hand and pain shot through her leg as she tried and failed to get her feet under her. She braced, expecting the ‘trooper to either shoot or cuff her. Her mind raced with ways she could disable him while restrained. Blaster bolts rang out and she flinched, expecting to feel the burning nerve pain of a disabling shot or blessed darkness of a quick death, but she felt nothing.

The ‘trooper dropped. A strong hand pulled her up by the back of her shirt and wrenched her to her feet before picking her up and running.

The Lion of Onderon all but grabbed his cub by the scruff her neck and tossed her on his back. Saw dumped her unceremoniously in the back of the box-speeder and took off for one of his hidden ships, shouting coded orders into his comm and barking directions at the two other officers in the cab with him.

Jyn was equal parts relief and mortification.

An evacuation notice was given to the whole camp. Move on to your safe zone. Different coordinates for different teams, so no one could sell out more than a few dozen Partisans if they were picked up on their way out. It was unlikely Jyn would see Schnell, Edgerly, or anyone else who wasn’t on this ship again. Not for years, anyway.

\-------

Now they had spent their second night in hyperspace. Jyn didn’t know where the next safe zone was and she doubted she’d be told. She was just grateful not to be tossed out of the airlock and left to die in the cold vacuum of space.

Her wrist and knee ached and her skinned hand stung. During the day she covered the area with a scrap of cloth that would stick to the raw skin and pull painfully when she removed it. Overnight she would “let it breathe,” as Saw called it, leaving it open to the air. It remained sticky, gently oozing serosanguinous fluid that would run over Jyn’s hand while she slept and then dry, stiff and crusty, on the surrounding intact skin. In the morning, she cleaned the large, raw area gently and scrubbed more aggressively at the skin around it, trying to dislodge the tiny pieces of road detritus that remained stuck in her hand.

With bacta it would have healed within an hour, but they left with only the clothes on their backs. All they had for first aid supplies were what was left in the expired medkit that had been stashed in the ship Force-knows-how-many years ago.

It was inconvenient and annoying. It was most tender exactly where the handle of her blaster hit. When she took target practice, the friction from the recoil would cause it to start bleeding again.

Sometimes she would press on it or pour disinfectant over it just to feel the sting, just because she knew she deserved it. She knew she deserved worse.

As she sat there on her bunk picking the dead skin away, she heard Saw’s heavy footsteps approaching. She took a breath and steeled herself. He hadn’t said much of anything to her since he picked her up off that street and waiting for his rebuke was pressing on her like a physical weight.

He appeared in the doorway and tossed a pair of fingerless, synth-leather gloves into her lap. Jyn looked at them and then at him, with a tense and bewildered expression.

“You will fall again, Jyn,” he said.

Her face was hot. He was calling her unreliable, useless.

Her voice rough, but steady. She would not cry. Not in front of him. “It will never happen again. I won’t let it.”

“I’m not finished. You will fall again. We fall, every one of us. Next time, you will step more carefully. Next time, you will get up faster. Because next time, I will not help you. You will help yourself.”

He tossed something else to her and it landed on the floor by her feet.

A small, adhesive bandage infused with bacta. Crumpled, much smaller than her wound, but still. Bacta.

“It’s expired,” he said, “But we work with what we have. Apply it, put on the gloves, and get ready to practice escaping from binders with no lockpick.”


End file.
